Love to the Grave

Written by Emmanuel Paalam

Death, Woman and Child by Käthe Kollwitz

Do you recognize that corpse: standing next to your fridge, over there? It doesn’t matter. To raise something is a tremendous feat. Do you remember us doing that together, from before we split, everything that happened? I still think over that period of our life: when it first entered the world, how we’d both been in awe. It was kind, but quiet, delicate in its presence. It smells a little sad now; I’m still figuring out how to clean it, and it’s in a lot of pain after everything that’s happened. But even now, it’s listening to me, talking to you—standing in the tuxedo I had put on it and everything, just for tonight. Sorry, I’m distracted. I’d like to talk, that’s why I came to you.

When I said I’d be gone on my work trip, you said you’d keep in touch. That was something I’d been waiting for: it’s cheesy, but it was a chance to trust you. In our romance, us coming together to make a new thing, walls broke. How we cried and embraced during our confessions to each other! And after crying on each other’s shoulders, there it was—our Love, that kid next to the river, born outwards from emotion into a real space and a time. It had nice eyes. So what was born was born thanks to our strength. To test that strength months later thrilled me.

On the trip, before I encountered your other, I had been keeping the Love warm, feeding it with sustenance and putting it to sleep at night in beds. It was polite, even when we’d arrive at our next hotel at late hours. It was a quiet child, did you ever notice? It always lingered peacefully on our dates, not too shy and not too forceful. Its laughing or walking with us was a great thing, but…those eyes. I’d admire its eyes all the time.

There was something about them—always misty. I think it knew. Maybe that’s why it came with me, instead of staying with you.

You’re looking at me strangely. I know why. It seems ironic, doesn’t it, how I let something with eyes and a presence like that die? Okay, well, “die”. Die, as in it technically did. But I mean, it wasn’t for fun, you know.  But that’s not important to you. You wanted to confront me after hearing about what I was doing with it. You think I’m crazy, don’t you, like I’d do this for fun. When you called me here after hearing what I was doing, saying to come so you could see us alone, did you do that for fun? You did not. Why did I listen to you? Why did I protect this body, if you have a new Love? There is something important still between us, even after our Love has broken up and died, important enough to move us both back into action.

---

Initially, the Love was renewed by the trip. The first days, when I wasn’t working, it would ask for my phone, reviewing what I’d messaged you and our past conversations from before the trip. As I drove it would study all it saw and touched, and chat endlessly with me, soaking in all it could. It wanted to absorb everything and give it to you; our Love was working to remember what it was for.

I don’t think I should’ve let it wander like that. Overworking oneself for a single cause—that’s a dangerous way to live. It was growing weaker without you; on some days it would even be shaking. And, well—look at me! I’d just assumed, stupidly, the cold North was getting to it. But I mean, looking back now: what could I have done, if I had taken the time to notice? You weren’t responding to anything I was sending. It had just been trying to focus on an absent someone, before either of us knew of the absence.

It was when I came across your other that it began to deteriorate. It was too rare of a chance to believe, even now: we were eating at a rest stop, and he was sitting next to us, in a tank top, jeans, his hair messy and all. It’d been over a week after I’d left—that and a half, I think—and the day of, it was lunchtime. We’d just gone in for a bite of curry at the restaurant there. He left momentarily, accidentally leaving his phone unlocked on the table next to his own plate of food. It flashed your number and a text, with your full name. Your full name, used for your contact info? Who does that? Who leaves their phone on a table in public? No—there’s no point in being upset. I’m sorry. I get that I should move on. I have something more important to tend to.

But the Love was upset. It had jumped out of its seat and started reading you and your other’s messages. It was desperate for you—and what it had found only broke it further. It wouldn’t even tell me what it had seen. Obviously, I wouldn’t (couldn’t) look myself. I mean, y’know—how did you meet him? On an app? Online? You don’t need to tell me. I told it to stop snooping through a stranger’s things, worried that someone would see, and eventually got up and pulled it outside. But I was shocked; even as I was moving, my brain was frozen in time. That notification. A multitude of possibilities. And the Love began to tug at my shirt, acting more childish than usual—its eyes. It was always so put-together, you know; you remember, don’t you?

I was disciplining it, some people sheepishly looking away, our food inside growing colder. I was about to shout in my disarray, when the Love wailed to me, “But you and her—! My whole existence relies on you two! And now, she’s abandoning me! I’m going to die!”

Actually now I am curious: how did you meet your new boyfriend? What was it like when you first contacted him? Was it like our confessions? I thought we had something, the two of us becoming one. What had you found in him that was more important than preserving that living, breathing thing?

---

Things that don’t originate from the space and time of earthly nature don’t die how humans do. They’re memories, the Love being the memories of our romance. It wasn’t just all our feelings or givings, but rather their product into a thesis-like creation. It couldn’t be measured or monitored or assessed at any hospital, or by any doctor, which we’d both found out early on. It didn’t really have to eat or sleep. But—do you remember when we’d shared my boba tea on that date? Things like that, those events were how our Love grew. The Love, I’d noticed, had temporarily grown three inches after that date. The revelation of your adultery gave it stomach pains. It complained a lot about that kind of thing the night after the rest stop, actually.

I can’t stop thinking about its misty eyes. When did you first consider cheating? When I accidentally broke your lawnmower and cried on your couch afterwards? When you found me drunk in that alley, in November, or in October, or August, after the Love came down into our lives? All those months before, I was actually always being really stupid—but, no, not now, I shouldn’t right now. It makes no difference to what’s happened. Are you crying? Oh, oh god, sorry, that was rude too. It’s just…I really didn’t think this would affect you so much. How is your new Love, formed with a new man? Is it nice and sweet like ours was? Well, maybe I shouldn’t ask that now.

But our Love, you see, it was decaying long before I got home. In the car it would always lie in the back in a strange way, hiding its rotting self except when we got to a hotel, leaving stealthily to fall asleep listlessly in the beds. It’d stopped eating. It was really decaying once I began driving back home: its tissues pulsing with blood, translucent in parts of the arms and face. Bones, too. It smelled so isolated. By the time I got home—right before I texted you, pushing aside all my hesitance—it had lost seven fingers.

At first, I panicked, unsure of what to do about the lonely smells or fading flesh. But eventually, I understood something: you didn’t need its existence anymore. It was an obstacle to you. And so, for the Love—in its respect for your wishes—dying was an obligation. You had something more meaningful, with someone else; in its conversion back from space and time to—what did our Love come from?—it was respecting that in its own way. I could feel that reality too.

Look—I didn’t want it to die! I know: you’re bawling in the corner there, seeing what’s gone on now. But I couldn’t do anything: not with you gone, who it needed more than me. I didn’t like it. I was mortified. But arriving home, I accepted its fate. I had to.

Now, you probably know that last part was a lie—it’s why you called me here. If I really am okay, why did I purchase a cot for it to sleep in at my house, just hours after sitting on my couch, contemplating what to do? Why did I give it a minifridge to preserve its (still) ungutted, rotting self in during the day? When you opened the door tonight and saw the dead Love standing with me, breathing and not totally dead yet not totally living—you were frightened. But who cared? I didn’t—or, more specifically, I didn’t bother to. And why didn't I care? What is so important that I shouldn’t care?

---

Your new boyfriend messaged me back when I had first told him, in this strange glee I’m still feeling even now, about how I was maintaining our Love. Oh, you know, I’d sent him this really passionate message. I mean “passionate” in a positive way. I was feeling all kinds of ways before, when the Love had been dying and I’d been driving home with a feeling of dread, having confronted you, then heard your complex side of the story, tried talking to you about everything and what was happening to our Love, then finally (reluctantly) deciding with you the appropriate changes to our relationship status. I remember all those conversations we had over the phone: how I’d be arguing with you in my vehicle, pressing my head in my hands and my elbows in my steering wheel on the sides of the road, not able to look at the Love behind me.

But by the time your new partner contacted me, I wasn’t, and am not, angry anymore, not at anyone. Because now, I have something more important than a relationship. He had in return called me obsessive, saying that, if I cared about you, I would let it die. I have considered discarding it; it’s bothersome to smell always the sadness of a rotting thing—the past—and to feed and protect it. But I don’t think it's that simple, that a Love disintegrates for convenience.

“Dude if you really want to do goof for her, give up the creepy-as-shit act aleeady,” he messaged me, when we were talking once on social media. “she’s loves me, more than she ever loved you. how could she have ever if this I what you’re really like?” What was he implying? That we’d broken up, which is true; then you met someone new, which is true; now, you love him more than you did me. Well, that’s true, too.

Okay, listen: I know how that sounded, but look. I mean—we loved each other months ago, but sometimes fought. One night at my house, we were arguing in the kitchen because I had been working a lot, and you felt I was forgetting you. You’d called me apathetic, and I apologized to you (kind of pettily), but then you started to yell and I got really upset. Suddenly, the Love emerged from the next room, where it had been listening. We both glanced at it, and saw a dead bird in its hands.

“Is that—?” you began, after some silence, our collective fury abruptly fizzled out. But it interrupted you, muttering, “He’s been working for money for a big dinner, but now you’re mad at him. So I got a dinner instead.” It spoke to us whilst standing at the doorway, watching, as though we were in the air and it was on the earth, waiting for us to return to the ground.

We buried the bird, but that’s not important. We fought often. Did you love me? Surely no, I mean: I was often tired, or busy, or irresponsible or obscure to you. I was too human to be lovable. But the Love—our thesis—often did things, eccentric things, when we’d struggle or fight, as though to refresh us. After that incident, I bought you a big dinner, and the Love shared your delight and my relief. I think that was what you were in love with: not what I was, but what, through our intentions for each other, we were working for together.

And no, I won’t ask you what tired you of that. But, you know, I’ve seen your boyfriend’s socials: he’s outgoing, to say the least. But it's his photos that caught my attention. You look fine in those photos, but your new Love looks dreary and is always behind you two. Remember when we went to that arcade, or when we hung my laundry in my backyard and danced around in the sun? In response, our Love would frolic. When we’d post pictures whenever we’d have fun or got out or something, our Love would lean into the camera, interested and humored. You were always so curious of that; I could see it in you. In your new boyfriend’s posts, you and him are always loving each other, going places and holding hands, your boyfriend writing post-bachelor style captions to an audience of forty to one hundred comments. Yet in not one of them is the new Love you have actually active: always in the back, a complementary piece for two people to have as an accessory of their relationship.

I let a bird sit in a windowsill at my house this morning as I prepared for you, listening to it sing to the quietly watching corpse-body of our Love.

---

The truth is, I agreed to come here because I was still considering asking you to help me bury our Love—at the river, where it was born. But I can do better than that, can’t I? I mean, look at it there. I watched over it in its final days from an earthy thing to something new, held it as it came to terms with its own demise, and now have its body standing beside me. But it must not forget you, even after your departure. Why else would I do my all to bring it back to life now?

And you called me, I imagine, to convince me to destroy the corpse. But I can’t. You have a new Love that smells fresh and alive. But its eyes are blank. Our Love’s eyes had mist, but were deep and complex. And that was because it was a Love that was there with its makers. That complexity—I will have that back—with or without you.

The will we had is dead. So it will live again, not codependent on but in remembrance of your hopes for it. It was what we’d been holding together, not in spite of but as a result of our decisions, our offerings, our mistakes, our forgivings, all for each other. Do you see it now? The Love’s already died after you left, yes—but look! It was dead, but I’ve rejuvenated it, brought it back. That’s all I’ve been doing since the day I came back: I placed it in a freezer, urged it to go on; and it managed, through me inserting all my passion into the Love, to do away with its dependence on you. That embrace of ours at the river; now it’s just me embracing myself that our Love is living on. No, not our Love—my Love. It’s standing here in this little kitchen of yours next to me, smelling a little better, looking a little cleaner, wearing my fancy clothes, silent and still as it keeps its intestines in itself and its eyeballs in itself and its fingers together regrown too, just as I taught it. Its eyes: its eyes: they’re still there. They’re still able to see something, that mist is still there.

This is not a funeral. This is not a wedding, either. This, I think, couldn’t even be considered a birth. How many people has your boyfriend told? No authority, we knew, would ever suspect that Love was a living, breathing thing; no clinic or science could understand it. No one can or should regulate or politicize or objectify something so personal, right? this experience? This is something only I can reclaim. So that’s what I’m doing; this body is one that I’m reanimating, day by day, on my own. It was something that originally existed through the both of us. And I’m doing so because it was always the Love, not you, that captured my fascination.

C’mon, look at this now! It’s coming back after death: slowly, but surely. I’ll tend to the Love, now underneath my care. It shall be good again—for, even without you, it will harness your past dreams, and use them for itself. It’ll be long before it can live on its own, before I’ll be able to get it to stop falling apart all over the floor; I don’t know if the Love’ll ever fully live without one of its origin points to fuel it. But that’s what it’s going to take, isn’t it? No matter the blood and the violence, I’m doing this—I want to protect the product that was our Love, because it was showing me something, something that only its cloud-colored, beautiful eyes could see.

So take your new Love, with your own boyfriend in mind, and I’ll take my Love, and we both will see where they go. It doesn’t matter if you recognize the corpse; it’s morphing. I love you for causing that. Thank you for calling me tonight. Look at me, now—there is something more important between us. And you left it behind. Now, it is mine. How wonderful it is, to show you the opportunity you’ve given me.